“The title’s invocation of Van Gogh’s painting proves apt. Like the artist’s swirling night sky, Mootoo’s prose contains turbulence within careful composition. The result resembles pointillism: individual impressions that cohere into recognizable forms only when viewed from proper distance.” —Selena Mercuri reviews. Starry Starry Night, by Shani Mootoo (Toronto: Book*hug Press, 2025) $24.95 / 9781771669566
“Lovers of the short story should rush right out and get their hands on Victoria writer Terence Young’s new collection. I was utterly captivated by these stories that gently probe ordinary life with grace and insight.” —Candace Fertile reviews Give Us This Day, by Terence Young (Winnipeg: Signature Editions, 2025) $21.95 / 9781773241616
Venerable poet “delivers an impressive thirteenth poetry book,” “a collection that is not only evocative and visceral but masterfully precise, honouring its namesake (a reference to the formerly common training routine of figure skaters to practice control, precision, and balance).” —Brooke Lee reviews Compulsory Figures, by John Barton (Qualicum Beach: Caitlin Press, 2025) $20.00 / 9781773861661
Ruminative and speculative, a debut story collection is diverse in subject, time, and character as it ponders “the limits of personal agency to reconcile with landscapes that are altered or altering beyond the capacity of any individual to influence.” —Dana McFarland reviews The Other Shore, by Rebecca Campbell (Hamilton: Stelliform Press, 2025) $21.00 / 9781998466016
What follows after an epic coastal earthquake, with a staggering body count and collapsed infrastructure? A sophomore novel with magic realist elements explores the question in a way that’s “that’s well-told, and in an unconventional manner as it whips us from one timeframe to another without ever leaving us behind.” —Heidi Greco reviews Ladder to Heaven, by Katie Welch (Hamilton: Wolsak & Wynn, 2025) $26.00 / 9781998408276
In a complex, wide-ranging novel with themes related to family, violence, and cultural identity, generations of women strive for peace and contentment despite the sorrowful, imposing outside world. —Theo Dombrowski reviews Songs from This and That Country, by Gail Sidone Šobat (Winnipeg: Great Plains Publishing, 2025) $27.95 / 9781773371412
With her late-Victorian setting on Vancouver Island, a debut novelist “clearly takes much care in constructing her story, using metaphor effectively to enhance the reader’s appreciation of the wilderness setting and the lengthy cast of characters.” Despite the successes, the novel proved confounding on occasion for our reviewer. —Ron Verzuh reviews A Snake and a Feathered Bird, by Angie Ellis (Saskatoon: Thistledown Press, 2025) $24.95 / 9781771872812
In a “brutally frank, but also hopeful” novel that “nail[s] the adolescent voice—there’s plenty of profanity, a touch of irreverence, and no small amount of self-deprecation,” a teenage girl struggles to manage her compulsions and find equilibrium. —Jessica Poon reviews A Drop in the Ocean, by Léa Taranto (Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2025) $19.95 / 9781551519813
An author’s fourth historical novel is buoyed by tumultuous ocean voyage scenes and a love for the ages. Its exposition, however, raises the question of whether it might have met greater success as nonfiction. —Valerie Green reviews The Rebel’s Wife, by Gerald Richardson Brown (Vancouver: Granville Island Publishing, 2025) $24.95 / 9781989467794
A fiction writer’s first book of nonfiction—a memoir “that is at once intimate, wryly humorous, and informative as it takes the reader from that tumble on the mountain trail to the present”—addresses the difficult details of living with Parkinson’s Disease “unflinchingly, with candour and occasionally an exasperated wit.” —Trish Bowering reviews In This Faulty Machine: A Memoir of Loss and Transformation, by Kathy Page (Toronto: Viking Canada, 2025) $34.95 / 9781037800887
“Poetry infused Tom’s life and shaped it as he ‘recarved’ words in a never-ending attempt to squeeze more meaning from them. His passing was swift and silent, leaving us with his poetry to ponder and consider as we navigate the troubled world he left behind.” —Ron Verzuh reflects on the restless decades of his lifelong friend.
A poetry series—with an aim to “produce beautiful volumes and to alert readers to poems that remain vital to thinking about urgencies of the contemporary moment”—lives up to its ambitions with authoritative, revelatory essays and an impressive sampling of a poet’s “visceral,” “wry,” “potent,” “grim,” and intermittently comical poems. —Steven Ross Smith reviews Hunger: The Poetry of Susan Musgrave, selected with an introduction by Micheline Maylor (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2025) $23.99 / 9781771126953
Simultaneously black- and warmhearted, a Victoria author’s sophomore novel satirizes corporate culture. In it, a nebbish hero simmers with fantasies of power and revenge… and then strikes a fateful bargain with dire consequences. —Ron Verzuh reviews Colin Gets Promoted and Dooms the World, by Mark Waddell (Toronto: Viking Canada, 2025) $26.95 / 9780735250321
Acknowledging that “life’s mid-point [is] now far behind,” a writer’s volume of poems meditates on the past, family, nature, faith, love, and, generally (says our reviewer), “the latter part of life, with all of its disappointments and consolations.” —Carellin Brooks reviews The Time of Falling Apart, by Wendy Donawa (Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2025) $22.95 / 9781998526307
“Sandy Duncan came into our island bookstore one day in 1989 and wondered if we would like to carry her new novel….” —Phyllis Parham Reeve recalls the activism, publications, and irrepressible personality of Sandy Frances Duncan.
Like “a call to action, a protest, and an accusation,” a formally experimental and politically engaged collection of poems wrestles with—and questions—the ethics of the Vancouver housing market. —Jane Frankish reviews SCAR/CITY, by Daniela Elza (Montreal: McGill Queen’s UP, 2025) $19.95 / 9780228023739
“A book like One Thousand and a Night stands or falls on the portrayal of its main character, and Lyalya passes every test. She is strong and forthright, brave and opinionated, resilient and optimistic, and it’s hard not to feel just a little in awe of her, just the way her niece does.” —Ryan Frawley reviews One Thousand and A Night as Told by Larissa, Construction Shock Worker, by Marina Sonkina (Gananoque: Guernica Editions, 2025) $25.00 / 9781771839662
“Two Pigs did make me smile, I noticed; while reading the slim volume, I guffawed at least once. In contrast, ‘The Three Pigs’ is sturdy and practically-minded. It sharpens my awareness of brick as an advantageous building material.” —Brett Josef Grubisic reviews Two Pigs, by David Bouchard (illustrated by Christine Battuz) (Vancouver, Midtown Press, 2025) $21.95 / 9781988242606
In a Vancouver-set debut novel, “an unsettling story about victimization and forgiveness,” 29-year-old Crystal and her teenage daughter Becky struggle on the long winding path of their lives. The “restrained and understated” writing anchors a harrowing account of precarity. —Bill Paul reviews Most Grievous Fault, by Meg Todd (Madeira Park: Nightwood Editions, 2025) $24.95 / 9780889714984
Sharing a focus on Chinese Canadian war efforts, a pair of strikingly illustrated picture books tell layered stories that would serve well at home and in the classroom. —Alison Acheson reviews Endgame: The Secret Force 136, by Catherine Little (illustrated by Sean Huang) (Oakville: Plumleaf, 2023) $22.95 / 9781738898244 and Reach for the Sky: How Two Brothers Built an Airplane in Chinatown, by Evelyn Sue Wong (illustrated by Sarah Ang) (Oakville: Plumleaf, 2025) $22.95 / 9781738898244